


The walking shell

by divenire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, But how could he not be with this backstory?, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Gen Fic, dark and morbid thoughts, derek hale is the angstiest, so don't read this if you want something happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divenire/pseuds/divenire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Hale is a walking shell. A zombie. The boy with the dead family no one knows he’s responsible for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The walking shell

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t entirely know where this came from. I was having a bad day and this sort of just came spilling out of me.

It's all he can do to sit there and rock back and forth and run his hands over his head and shake. That's it. That's all he's got left. All there is left of him is this thing that moans while sleeping, this thing with frazzled, frantic, bloodshot eyes.

Because he can't handle it anymore. He just can't.

It was too much. And they're all gone now. All of them. The only place they exist anymore is in his head. And they don't like him. No, all they do all day is pester him. Irritate him and pick at his already picked-over carcass. Why didn't you try to help? they whisper. Why weren't you there? Why aren't you with us?

It hurts. Everything hurts, like he's constantly being seared by acid from the inside out. His skin itches and sometimes all he wants is to peel it off, to break it and watch it slide away.

But it won't make the itching stop. It won't make any of it stop.

He just wants it to stop.

He just wants it all to stop. He needs it all to stop.

But they won't let it.

He doesn't know why, but they stop him every time he tries. The voices. The memories of everyone he's lost.

They're ghosts now and he so desperately wants to be one of them. Wants to be free of the pain that shackles him and tears into him like long, bloody spikes stabbing in and out, in and out with a pattern that matches his shaky, ragged breathing.

It hurts so much and he is so very, very tired. Tired of the voices. Tired of the images that flick across the backs of his eyelids every time he closes his eyes.

He can't remember the last time he slept without waking up screaming. Without having a vivid, gaudy, brightly lit nightmare that is less nightmare and more his brain replaying the same incident, the same reality over and over and over.

It happened.

And he can't stop thinking about it. About how it's all his fault. About how stupid and foolish and reckless he was.

He wishes he could just sink into nothingness, never to be heard from again.

But that's not the way it works.

He's being punished. He knows he's being punished.

So he takes it. Because he feels guilty, will feel guilty until his last breath and probably after that.

People tell him that he's brave, that he's strong, that he'll make it through this.

There is no making it through this. There is only this. There is only the bitter, rotten taste of regret at the back of his throat every second of every day.

There is the only the knowledge that he is responsible for all of it. And not just in a sense that he has the sort of guilt only survivors of terrible tragedies can understand. No, this is him being actually, provably responsible for it all. All of it.

He's thought about going into the sheriff's office and turning himself in. That's what he should do, right?

And yet he's somehow not able to do it. He's walked by the station at least fifty times by now, each time with the intent of going in and explaining it, explaining it all, but... he can't. He can't. He can't. He can't.

He can't tell anyone else, either. He's opened his mouth to say it so many times he's lost count but nothing comes out. He can't say it. He can't stand the looks he knows he'll get.

Not that the looks he currently gets are any better.

The adults look at him with pity so heavy he almost feels like it's trying to reach out and choke him.

Anyone younger looks at him with scorn, with derision. He makes them uncomfortable so they mock him. They whisper and they stare.

At school, when he bothers to go, he hears people talking.

He was never what you would call popular or well liked, he was more what you would call invisible but now? Now he's the talk of the school. But not in a good way and not in a way that makes anyone want to talk to him. Not that he has anything to say.

He hears them whisper, they think he can't hear them, they think they're being clever, but they're not. He hears it all.

He hears it when they call him a zombie.

That's all he is anymore. A walking shell. The boy with the dead family no one knows he's responsible for.

And it actively takes all of his energy, what little he's got, not to scream. Half the time, he feels like he's screaming and he knows he's not making any noise. He's not making a sound.

He avoids speaking whenever he can for fear that if he opens his mouth it'll all come rushing out, he'll scream and he'll tell them all what he's done.

He should tell someone what he's done.

But he can't.

He doesn't know how.

Before, in the world that no longer exists for him, he was quiet, but he was capable of expressing himself when necessary.

But now?

Now he's incapable of much of anything, let alone expressing himself.

There's not much worth expressing.

So he goes on the same as he has been for a while now, avoiding everything and everyone that reminds him of the family he used to have, the life he used to live. 

There were, at first a few people who cared, a few people who reached out and tried to help, but it’s been long enough now that they’ve all but given up. The only one left is his sister, and that’s only probably because she’s been more or less forced into living with him, taking care of him such as it is, until he’s eighteen and finally old enough to go and live on his own. 

She’s also technically his Alpha, but it’s not much of a pack when there’s only two of you and you barely spend more than five minutes in a room together. She doesn’t act like much of an Alpha, either. She more or less just ignores it and him, when she can.

She spends a lot of time in her room crying and a lot of time at the hospital, visiting their uncle. 

He hasn’t gone once and by now she’s stopped asking him to. 

He can’t go, he can’t go and see his uncle, see a flesh and blood remnant of the man who used to be his favorite person in his whole family, maybe even his favorite person out of everyone. 

Because that thing lying in that bed, covered in bandages? That’s not his uncle. 

And he can’t stand it.

And he can’t stand this town.

And he can’t stand driving past the road that leads to the ruins of his old home. The home he’d grown up in. The home that as of last year he thought would always be there. The home he’d always pictured living in forever. 

Everything is ruined now.

Now he is a walking shell of his former self and that's all there is. It's all he deserves to be. It's all he will ever let himself be because it wouldn’t be right to do anything else, to be anything else. He deserves to fail out of school and just...

He wants to cease existing entirely. But they won't let him. The memories of everyone he's responsible for won't let him. 

So he's stuck. He's nothing. He's empty and hollow and not able to heal, not able to move on and not able to stop.


End file.
